Christmas at the coast

This year we headed up to the Sunshine coast in Queensland to spend a few days with Brandon's family for Christmas. It was a really nice break away, and got us back into the beach feeling. Even though we live so close, we have been pretty lazy about heading to the beach regularly. Christmas day was beautiful and we explored the rock pools near our hotel to find nudibrachs of all things! Nudibrachs are sea slugs and I honestly didn't realise they were hardy enough to live in rock pools!

The next day we woke up to rain, but by the afternoon it was beautiful again. I bought a tripod at the boxing day sales, and was very glad I didn't intend to do any other shopping. It was nuts! I went down to the rockpools again, intending to take more photos of nudibrachs because I also bought a polarising filter. However, it was high tide and all the rock pools were pretty much under water.

On Saturday we woke up to another bleak day that unfortunately didn't clear. In the afternoon we drove up to Mount Coolum and climbed to the top. It is a recommended 2 hour walk, but that's far too long for fit people. It took us less than an hour to get to the top, take a bunch of photos, and come back down again. There are a lot of stairs on the way up, and near the top you have to walk over slippery rocks. I'm not sure why there is a disabled car park in the parking lot, it's not really wheelchair friendly.

The view to the coast

The view to the inland

The rest of the trip was pretty laid back and we got back on Monday night in time for dinner. It's great to be home!

This little water dragon was pretty friendly